People ask me all the time, “hey Orlando, when are you going to implement a binomial proportion confidence interval calculation to sort Rehashes by popularity?” And my response is always, “when I get to it, voice in my head.”

I finally got around to it, albeit not as robust as I’d like it to be. But for the approximately zero of you who are interested in how the ranking works, it takes into account how many (unique) users have viewed it, the number of users watching it, and when it was posted. It applies weights to all those characteristics, does a little magic, and voila, it comes up with a score. That’s why you’ll see some Rehashes with fewer watchers ranking above those with a higher number of watchers. The older a Rehash is, the lower its score will be. This encourages fresh items to pop up above something that has had weeks to cultivate viewers and watchers.

I’d like to do something similar with users based on their activity level, and whenever possible (I’ll gladly take ideas), reward them in some way. A weekly/monthly “most active member” could perhaps win something, though I’m not sure what could be provided of value. Rehash has about as much money as Detroit. It turns out that running a free clothes swapping website with no ads generates as much cash as a sauna in the Sahara. But I love this website, and all of its users, so I’ll do what I can.

However, I think that even before getting to that my main focus should be on providing users with suggestions of Rehashes they may like. And not crappy suggestions like, “look! These items have the same tag!” but good suggestions like, “look! These items are your size, a color you seem to like, a style you generally go for, and it’s Rehashed by someone who matches you pretty well.” I think that’s an invaluable feature that’ll keep you all coming back.

In order to do that, you’ll need to help me help you. Go to your user settings (click the dropdown on the top right of any page, then Settings) and fill out as much information as you feel comfortable with, including information about your sizes. None of this data gets sold to third parties, and it’s clearly stated who gets to see what.

In the last couple of days I’ve added a few things you may or may not have noticed, depending on how hawk-eyeish you are. You can now subscribe to categories and users, and every day you’ll get an email listing out all the new Rehashes that were added that day to those categories or by those users (if any). It’s a neat way to follow the people or clothes you’re interested in. An old Rehash feature (active users) was also added, which you can see from the Community > Everyone section. It shows all the users who have made a successful trade within the last 15 days.

Another cool feature is the quick view. When you’re looking at a list of Rehashes, instead of clicking through to get a little more detail, you can now click the “Quick View” button and see the pertinent details at a glance.

Now, let’s get personal for real.

I’m on this crazy quest to make Rehash amazing. A feature I’m working on now is giving you better suggestions and placing those above stuff you may not really care about. Part of that requires me to use my math degree (don’t get excited, I just minored in it), another part requires input from you all. If you go to your user settings, you’ll be able to add your sizing information which I’ll use to generate better recommendations. Another is to make sure you watch items often; any little thing you’re remotely interested in, watch it. Subscribe to categories and users as well. All these things get fed into a a beep-boop-beep machine that goes 0001010101110010101001010 and then will (hopefully) output Rehashes you’ll love.

Then when we have quadribizillions of users and Rehashes, you’ll only see the ones relevant to your interests. Cool? Cool.

Yeah, yeah, I’m going to mention it again anyway in case you don’t check your email (or unsubscribed). You can now print USPS shipping labels directly from your trade window. You can also schedule a pickup of your package, because who enjoys the Post Office? Nobody. Not even postal workers. They go nuts there, that’s where the term “going postal” comes from. Do yourself a favor: print your labels with Rehash and avoid going postal.

So what’s next? I’ve been scouring the suggestions forum and implementing old ideas that seem good, and some of you have messaged me some stuff that shows promise. Some of you really want wish/wanted lists. That’s a great idea, and I want to make it happen, but it needs to be better than the old covet system of Rehash 1.0 which was essentially just some text. Looking back, that was half-assed. I don’t want to half ass, I want to full ass. Two of you want watch list folders so you can categorize things you’re watching. One of you wants a puppy.

I’m not sure what major feature I’ll work on next, but rest assured I’ll be working on something for you all. That is, between trying to get us some more members.